


Kairos

by captainkilly



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Comfort/Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 17:35:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12512620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainkilly/pseuds/captainkilly
Summary: Karen Page is an excellent liar, until her pretense crumbles.





	Kairos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evil_bunny_king](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/gifts).



> Fulfilling the prompt _"the song 'Unfucktheworld' by Angel Olsen, more of your Karen"_ given to me by evil_bunny_king. I was also influenced in part by the eulogy Father Lantom provides in canon at Grotto's funeral, in which he speaks of a world being lost upon someone's death. A few of the lines in this are lifted from the latest trailer for The Punisher, though I have no doubt canon will make something different of them than I do here, and some of their filming pictures inspired me as well!

She doesn't know how long it's been _since_.

 

Karen Page has always liked to play pretend. From her mother's too-big shoes to smiles at Sunday breakfast, from the annual Nativity play (she was _always_ one of the sheep – blonde curls and all) to keeping it together on the worst days of her life, she's become well-practiced at pretending that things are okay and that nothing is the matter.

 

She plays pretend until it feels real. Tumbles out of bed in the morning and half-stumbles into a too-cold shower as her only gift to herself that day. The pretend starts with blowdrying her hair. Getting dressed in clothes that look like the kind of thing successful women are supposed to wear. Putting on shoes and whatever level of make-up is expected of her that day. By the time she walks out the door, she's all pretend and not a whole lot of Karen.

 

It's easy to be out the door and among people. Easier than coming home at all hours of the night and early morning, kicking off her shoes and cursing under her breath, and facing the latest tower of take-out dishes. Easier than closing her eyes at night and waiting for elusive sleep to claim her whole.

 

She likes to pretend she doesn't know how long it's been _since_. During the day, the knowledge falls away from her with every smile and politeness she can muster. Ghosts can't haunt her during sunshine hours, or so she believes when the sickly sweet scent of death fades with every step she takes further away from being alone. It's easier to forget when her hands aren't curled around a gun or gripping the steering wheel of a car. She lets herself forget for as long as there is light outside.

 

Night is a different story.

 

She knows _exactly_ how long it's been _since_. She can still count the minutes with Matt, recent as it is. She counts the hours with James Wesley, longer ago but not long enough to forget the time. She counts years and months with Kevin if anyone would ever ask, but her brain keeps getting stuck on _days_ and _hours_ and _minutes_ and _seconds_ when she thinks about her brother. Time gets screwed together wrong in her head, melts any kind of inner clock she keeps, trickles through her fingers every time the hourglass inside her shatters and splinters.

 

She breathes shuddering gasps into the air within her bedroom. Screams herself hoarse underneath blankets and pillows on the nights when the bed feels like it's about to swallow her whole. Finds herself tracing bulletholes on her walls until she's on the floor wishing she could find some kind of feeling inside her that doesn't hurt. Wishing she could find a memory that time and pain hasn't touched and torn to pieces.

 

Even the .380 is no longer heavy in her hands. It used to carry weight. Used to carry some semblance of gravity with it that could make a room stop spinning around her. Now, it just feels familiar in her grasp. Her hands have grown used to it the way she promised herself they never would.

 

Her response to the familiarity is almost disconcerting. _Almost_ , because she can't help the toothy smile that appears on her face when she manages to wrangle another unlicensed gun out of a shady dealer. This one's a good deal heavier than the .380, though shooting practice with it makes her grin even wider and feel just that much steadier inside herself.

 

She doesn't play pretend when it's three in the morning and the gun rests comfortably on her lap. The .380 lurks at the bottom of her too-large bag as the lone concession to the fact that reality has a habit of catching up with any kind of fantasy she lets herself perpetuate. This new gun is another kind of lifeline altogether, born of the need to ground and shackle herself to the damage that follows in her wake, and it is simply hers alone.

 

She coils around it at night the way mothers protect their young. Folds her fingers around its clip as though wrapping her hand around a lover's hand. Wakes with the scent of gunpowder in her hair and the taste of blood on her chapped lips. Gets up in the morning and slips into pretense as soon as the gun is safe beneath her bed.

 

If she stopped, if she halted in her tracks, if she crashed into inertia for a moment, she would find her heels glued to the floor of a confession booth in some quiet old church. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth at the thought. She doesn't have words to offer any priest or deity, even though prayer coats her tongue in a seasoned lip service to the dead and dying.

 

She's so tired of burying her world in the living earth.

 

*****

 

She doesn't know how long it's been _since_.

 

He has never made her count the days or hours. He isn't a man wrapped up in minutes or seconds, though she swears she can still hear his low huff of breath in her ear every time her finger lingers a little too long on her apartment wall's remaining bulletholes. Her treacherous brain plays the remnants of his voice on a loop in the dead of night, even when she knows that she's clinging to all the wrong things and using both hands to never let go of the little fight she's still got left inside her.

 

She sometimes wonders if he would be surprised at all to find that he's the one ghost she has made her peace with. Thinks there is not a lot about her that would take him aback, not really, not when he sees right through her charades and all the rest of her games. Thinks there's always been something about him that disarms her wholly.

 

She doesn't know how long it's been since Frank Castle walked out of her life, but she thinks she's going to remember the exact moment he walked back in.

 

"Jesus Christ, Frank," she finds herself saying one morning on her way to work. She folds her arms in front of her defensively for a moment and tries to look away. Gives that up when she feels his eyes on her, boring into her skull, observing her with his own blend of apprehension and curiosity. She winds up fixing him with a stare of her own. "What are you doing?"

 

"Ma'am," is all he says in turn, part-greeting and part-acknowledgment of their history all at once.

 

"You look ridiculous," she says, and can't help the half-laugh that escapes her at the sight of him. He's bundled up in warm clothes, cap and hood on his head, longer beard than she's ever seen on him, and wearing a blanket that smells like it hasn't seen a washing machine since its creation. There's a familiarity to the way her world shifts on its axis and comes to a standstill somewhere between them. Another laugh, more carefree and incredulous, bubbles forth in her chest and tumbles out from between her lips. "I can't believe I just gave you the last of my change."

 

"You can have that back."

 

"Keep it." She appraises him with a trained critic's eye. "You look like you need it more than I do."

 

His own face lights up in a half-grin at that. "That so?" he asks, eyes crinkling and mouth curving upward in a way she knows too well. She's somewhat relieved when he removes the blanket and folds it in front of him, even when the act makes him look impossibly smaller to her eyes. "Can't stand here too long. Just came.. uhh.." He licks his lips. Looks away from her briefly. "Your newspaper's archives ain't digital anymore."

 

"I know that." She arches a brow at him. "I was up to my knees in past editions of it during your trial."

 

He has the grace to cast his eyes downward at the mention of that. She doesn't feel bad for him, not really, even when his shoulders slump and he avoids her gaze a little too studiously. He has never explained why he messed up when he took the stand. She thinks she can guess. Thinks she knows the only currency that could get Frank Castle to sign his life away on what seems like little more than a whim.

 

"What sort of information are you after?" she asks, finally, when all he does is stand there and she can feel her tentative hold on her pretense slipping. "I imagine that it's big, if you finally came to me after.." She can't bear to name the months, the weeks, the days without him. Shakes her head as if to clear it. "Just be as specific as you can."

 

He holds out a folded piece of paper. "It's all there. Including contact details." He doesn't expand on it beyond that. "You'd best get going. Before anyone thinks you're doing business with a hobo."

 

"As far as disguises go," she admits to him, lifting the piece of paper from his hand, "this is one of the better. Even when that beard's just.."

 

"Too much?"

 

"Oh god, yeah," she laughs, nodding her head fervently. She wrinkles her nose at him. Clasps the paper so tightly in her hand that she thinks she might tear it by accident. "I'll check for you. One condition."

 

"What's that?"

 

"Coffee." She says it before her brain catches up with her. Mentions it before her pretense can lay claim to her voice again. Hisses out a breath when his brow knits in confusion. "I want a diner do-over. You and me. You owe me that much."

 

He looks at her for what feels like forever. Finally concedes with a dip of his head and a slow, cat-like blink with those dark eyes that anchor her to the earth.

 

She is not the first to move away.

 

*****

 

"Page?"

 

"Hi, boss." She chirps out the greeting rather merrily, wedged between stacks of newspapers as she is. "Just doing research. Have a new lead."

 

"The Italian piece?"

 

"With the editor," she responds with a vague wave of her hand. Her interest in the Italian mob's latest business ventures has waned exponentially over the past few days, but she thinks she's got enough ground covered to make it to tomorrow's edition in more-or-less one piece. "This is new. And big, potentially, if I can make the pieces fit."

 

Ellison heaves a sigh. She thinks she hears him mutter 'of course' under his breath, though it's ill-disguised by him scraping his throat. "Talk to me, Page."

 

She knows that tone too well by now to ignore the order. "Government conspiracy," she admits freely, not caring that Ellison's nose scrunches up in initial distaste. "Bigger than anything _Wikileaks_ has come out with. We're talking top level officials, the entire military apparatus, the NSA, probably also the CIA, Homeland Security, and a bunch of others all banding together in a collection of war crimes, torture, brainwashing, and _worse_." She's waving four newspapers at once in Ellison's direction, voice rising past the carefully cultivated pretense for just this one time since Midland Circle, raking a hand through her unruly hair before picking up some of the notes she's taken. "I have one source for this that's as good as it gets. Ex-military, served in the exact area some of these events took place in, currently lying low _because of_ _this_."

 

"Good god, Page." If she didn't know better, she'd think Ellison was hiding admiration beneath his incredulity. "It's like something just lit a fire under your ass. Don't get me wrong, you've been good. Top stories." He nods sagely at the rare praise he deals her. "But this? I haven't seen you light up like this since that first time you came to me _begging_ to let you search this entire archive up and down for anything to do with Frank Castle."

 

"I wasn't wrong about that," she points out, even when her skin grows hot and a blush slowly creeps up her cheeks. She forces the warmth back down into the same Pandora's Box that contains two guns and too many broken hourglasses to count. "I just need time to figure this out. Figure out how the pieces fit. They're all disparate, jagged, _weird_..." Her tone laces itself with distaste at how difficult it is to get anything out of her research, even with the benefit of names and dates as written on the small piece of paper she clings to throughout the day. She gestures angrily at the piles of papers that lie in concentric circles around her. "This might take weeks."

 

"You're not getting out of that opinion piece on Sunday," warns Ellison.

 

She shoots him an exasperated look. "I've been begging you to let me write that for a long time now, haven't I? Not a chance I'm getting out of that deal."

 

Karen doesn't think Trish Walker would forgive her if she retracted it, given how up in arms the woman had been about it only a day or two before. Her newfound friendship with the radio talk show host is one of the few remaining highlights of her stay in the city, even when it sends Ellison spiralling into worry and creates an even bigger target on her back half the time. She makes a mental note to call Trish later and get her no-nonsense opinion on this new thing she's working on.

 

"Take as long as you need." She always knew Ellison would concede. Always knew the man wouldn't be able to refuse the prospect of a major story. "Oh, and Page?"

 

"Yeah, boss?"

 

The man heaves another sigh before he turns to walk away. "Be careful."

 

She murmurs her assent to that even as she dives back into the rather interesting article she found on the CIA's Berlin Station. She's not sure how relevant it will be in the long run, but she's nothing if not thorough. She's always careful these days. Compartmentalises her life into different parts that never intersect without her say-so anymore.

 

The truth is that this is easier to do with Matt gone.

 

Her heart clenches at the thought. It shouldn't be like this. It doesn't make _sense_ like this. She leans back until her head comes to rest against the wall. Closes her burning eyes for a moment. Tells herself it's going to be okay.

 

Karen Page is an excellent liar.

 

*****

 

"That wasn't your handwriting," she observes as he approaches the waterfront she's standing near. She knows his scrawl inside out, having seen him mark a dozen documents with it, having seen old documents from his life before the park. The neat cursive that littered the paper he'd handed her was definitely not his. "Anything I should know?"

 

He shakes his head. "Paper's from an associate. It's legit."

 

"Yeah, I can tell it's legit," she snorts, incredulity always at war with common sense in her head, "because Ellison kept getting paler when I asked him about the Greek Projects." She shakes her head. "Can't believe there are so many references to these in the media and nobody's catching on to the connection."

 

"People see what they want."

 

"You don't say."

 

The sarcastic response escapes her before she can halt it in its tracks. She's left wondering what it is about Frank Castle, exactly, that makes all her usual careful filters stutter to a halt in her mouth. She huffs out an annoyed breath. Refuses to meet his too-inquisitive gaze.

 

He takes her silence in stride the way he does everything else about her.

 

"You said you had something for me, ma'am?"

 

The title clings to her, burrows itself into her ear like it wants to make its home inside of her, curls and folds around her in that familiar space that's entirely void of any sort of pretense. Her shoulders drop. She sags against the railing that separates her from the water. Closes her eyes in silent supplication to whichever deity still has the fortitude to listen to the never-ending stream of despair that wrenches itself from her at night.

 

She opens her eyes and meets Frank Castle's inquisitive gaze.

 

"Check the bag," she says, indicating the duffle bag at her feet with a firm nod. "I added as much as I could. Had a.. hm.. an _associate_ of mine add her two cents too." She mimics the word _associate_ back at him experimentally. Wonders if he picks up on the word being wrought with the affection for _friend_ as much now as when he said it earlier, too. Trish had not wanted to let go of the topic once made privy to the research. Sometimes, she thinks the blonde's own brand of insomnia hedges a little too closely to her own. "These people, Frank.. They're dangerous."

 

The look he gives her is full of 'no shit, really', but that doesn't deter her any. She fixes him with a stare of her own. Taps her foot at the same time she catches the minuscule tremor in his fingers. She knows a hornet's nest when she sees one. It's never stopped her from approaching it, but she takes precautions. Prides herself on whatever is left of her sense of self-preservation after all these years.

 

Frank's not the precautionary type.

 

"It's why you gotta stay clear," he mutters, picking the bag up without a single glance at its contents. "Get away from this thing."

 

 _Get away from me_ echoes in her skull as she realises she has not made her peace with his ghost yet after all. She takes a sharp breath. Inhales and exhales noisily before snorting out a half-laugh that's a good deal more derisive than she's ever sounded to his face before.

 

"No, I won't! Damn it, why won't you just let me help?" She'll argue this until she's blue in the face. She'll argue it until he looks away and relents. She'll argue it until he concedes defeat. Judging by the way his brow knits together, he's cottoned on to that too. "The world needs to know the _truth_ , Frank!"

 

He rounds on her and the cold night air shoots through her when his tone sounds wild and _angry_. "These men.. _they_ decide what the truth is!" Dark, dark eyes try to push reason into her. Her own eyes narrow. "Can't risk that. It's gotta be just me on the line."

 

"What if you're exposed?" She whispers it furiously. "What are you even going to _do_?"

 

"I need to find these bastards." His voice sounds gruff. He bites the words out as though they're a personal affront to his being. "And I gotta kill them. All of 'em."

 

Her eyes burn again. Fury uncurls inside her a little too lazily. She's a little too out-of-practice on letting loose on her anger. She wishes she could say the same for fear and sadness. Hates the way her throat tightens until she chokes on thin air. Hates how tears pool in her eyes and her nose starts running of its own accord.

 

"So where does that _end_ , Frank?" she finally manages. Hates how broken and weary and _tired_ she sounds. "Where does it end?"

 

He doesn't reply to her. He doesn't have to.

 

They both know the only way this will end is with her having to bury another world in the dying earth.

 

*****

 

She doesn't know how long it's been _since_.

 

The knock on her door comes as a surprise. She blinks exhausted eyes open at the sound. Scrapes her throat. Winces at the burning sensation in it that feels like sandpaper scraping across her windpipe. Curls up beneath the blanket anew when the sound dissipates.

 

Sits upright a moment later again when the door creaks open.

 

She may currently feel terribly sick and out of sorts, but she's not _suicidal_.

 

Karen Page sluggishly trains her gun on the tall figure that darkens her doorway. Blinks when it raises its hands in the air and takes a step forward into her too-small living room. Frowns when it coalesces into familiarity before her eyes.

 

"You mind pointing that somewhere else, ma'am?"

 

Frank Castle sounds almost _amused_ , damn him. She coughs and rattles her way through the next few breaths when a laugh threatens to overtake the last she's got left of her lung capacity. Lowers the gun just a fraction.

 

She thinks Frank must be several degrees of _suicidal_ when he crosses the short distance between them and drops to his knees before her. His hands reach for her when she gasps for air, pull the blanket down slightly until the cold rush of air from the room overtakes her, brush her hair back when it clings to her feverish brow. Her gun drops into her lap when his cool hand comes to rest at the base of her skull and his voice rumbles out words her head can't fully organise.

 

"What?" she asks, slurring the word with all the expertise of the half-drunk and half-sick woman she currently is.

 

"What are you doing on the floor?"

 

"Easier." She can't elaborate much more than that. Doesn't know how she's meant to convey the nightmares that await in her bedroom. Doesn't know how to talk to him about ghosts, even when she thinks he may understand being haunted better than most. "Am sick."

 

He heaves a sigh. "All right."

 

"You?" At his confused look, she decides to clarify. "Why are you here?"

 

His face almost looks pained for a moment. "Came to, uh, say I'm sorry."

 

She laughs out delirious joy. Knows for sure that she's hallucinating him, now, because his apologies somehow never quite sound as kind as this unless she is dreaming him into being.

 

"Really." Frank's voice decides on sounding exasperated in the next breath. "Shouldn't have pulled you in only to tell you to stay out again. Shoulda just.." He gestures helplessly for a moment, shrugging his shoulders and making a throwaway motion with his free hand. "Shoulda just been smarter 'bout that."

 

"Bullshit," she rasps out. Swallows painfully. "You knew what you were doing."

 

"All right."

 

"Yeah. That's what I thought." She chuckles the words out bitterly. Laces her venom with the haze of anything but sobriety. Forces a smile and tilts her head back until she can look him in the eye. Steels herself as though she's an extension of the battle armour he seems to favour these days. "Can't keep doing this."

 

"Ma'am," he says, and his hand tightens briefly on her too-hot skin, "you don't have to do that."

 

"Do what, Frank?" She yawns. Slurs his name the way she does every other syllable. Knows _exactly_ how long it's been since she hallucinated peace and an open door. Isn't about to fall into that trap again. "I'm not doing anything. I'm just.." A cough. A rasp. A throaty chuckle. "I'm just telling you how it is."

 

"How is it, then?"

 

She thinks the man before her may be begging death on his knees to take him right here and now. Fury lodges itself in her throat and goes to war with the fire that burns inside it already. She lets out a derisive laugh and leans back against the wall.

 

"I'm alone," she claims, and her hand tightens around her gun. "I'm the only one now."

 

He doesn't argue. Instead, he comes to sit beside her against the bullethole-riddled wall. The scent of darkest coffee and gunpowder residue curls into her nostrils as he shifts in place until they are shoulder to shoulder. Her hands twist uselessly in her lap as she relinquishes her hold on the only weapon that felt safe until _him_.

 

She's tired of fighting her solitude.

 

Her cheek comes to rest against his shoulder. She knows how long it's been since she felt safe. Eight years, five months, six days, eighteen hours, and twenty-two seconds. She resets that timer here, today, when his hand comes to rest atop hers with more warmth than any ghost is meant to possess.

 

"You don't have to pretend with me," he murmurs.

 

Karen Page _breaks_.

 

 


End file.
